Distinguished writers read from their works, answer questions and sign books. All events are free and open to the public. For further information, call the Office of Public Affairs at (610) 526-6520.

Paula Fox7:30 p.m., Thursday, Sept. 30
Thomas Great Hall

Jonathan Franzen called Fox's novel Desperate Characters "indisputably great . superior to any novel by Fox's contemporaries John Updike, Philip Roth and Saul Bellow." Paula Fox is also a Newbery Award-winning children's book author. Her memoir Borrowed Finery, originally excerpted in The New Yorker, appeared in 2001.

Originally published in 1995, Mary Karr's memoir of an apocalyptic childhood in East Texas, The Liars' Club, was a national bestseller, described by The New York Times as "one of the most dazzling and moving memoirs to come along in years." Its sequel, Cherry, was published in 2000. Karr's volumes of poetry include Abacus, The Devil's Tour and Viper Rum.

Charles Wright is one of this country's greatest lyric poets. His 15th book of poems, Buffalo Yoga, appeared in the spring of 2004; his earlier books include A Short History of the Shadow (2002), Negative Blue (2000), Appalachia (1998) and Black Zodiac (1997), which received the 1998 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry and the 1997 National Book Critics Circle Award for Poetry.

Reading sponsored by the Marianne Moore Fund for the Study of Poetry and by the Whitehill-Linn Fund

Edward P. Jones 7:30 p.m., Tuesday, Nov. 9
Thomas Great Hall

Edward P. Jones' first novel, The Known World, received the 2004 Pulitzer Prize for fiction. Jonathan Yardley of the Washington Post Book World called it "the best new work of American fiction to cross my desk in years." Twice he was named a finalist for the National Book Award: for The Known World and for his first collection of stories, Lost in the City.

Reading sponsored by the Whitehill-Linn Fund

Richard Howard7:30 p.m., Thursday, Nov. 18
Thomas Great Hall

Richard Howard is a Pulitzer Prize-winning American poet and has translated the works of Baudelaire, Barthes, Cocteau, Yourcenar and others from the French. Critic Harold Bloom has said of his work that it "is one of the handful of surprising and refreshing inventions in American poetry." His volumes Inner Voices: Selected Poems, 1963-2003 and Paper Trail: Selected Prose, 1965-2003 will both appear in the fall of 2004.

Reading sponsored by the Whitehill-Linn Fund and the Marianne Moore Fund for the Study of Poetry

Charles Baxter 7:30 p.m., Thursday, Feb. 17
Thomas Great Hall

Charles Baxter's novel The Feast of Love (2000) was called "a near-perfect book, as deep as it is broad in its humaneness, comedy and wisdom" by The Washington Post. His new novel Saul and Patsy appeared in 2003. In addition to two other novels, he is the author of four story collections, Harmony of the World, A Relative Stranger, Through the Safety Net and Believers.

Reading sponsored by the Whitehill-Linn Fund

Antonya Nelson 7:30 p.m., Tuesday, March 22
Thomas Great Hall

Antonya Nelson is the author of three novels and four short story collections, the most recent of which is Female Trouble (stories). She has received the 2003 Rea Award for Short Fiction as well as National Endowment for the Arts and Guggenheim Fellowships, and was named one of the "new voices for the next millennium" by The New Yorker in 1999.

Poet W.S. Merwin has remarked, "Adrienne Rich's poems, volume after volume, have been the makings of one of the authentic, unpredictable, urgent, essential voices of our time. All of her life she has been in love with the hope of telling the utter truth.." Among her more than 15 volumes of poetry are Dark Fields of the Republic: Poems 1991-95, Midnight Salvage, Fox and, coming in the fall of 2004, The School Among the Ruins. Her most recent book of essays is Arts of the Possible: Essays & Conversation.

Reading sponsored by the Marianne Moore Fund for the Study of Poetry and by the Lucy Martin Donnelly Women Writers Series Fund, with additional support from the Department of English, the Feminist and Gender Studies Program and the 1902 Fund.

This program has been made possible through a major grant from the Heinz Family Philanthropies.